Follow @googlewmc on Twitter

Okay, we’re starting to release new webmaster videos. Normally you could follow me on Twitter to find out about each new video, but I’m on a Twitter diet until the end of January. So if you want to hear when new webmaster videos or webmaster blog posts come out, go follow @googlewmc on Twitter (that’s the official account for Google Webmaster Central).

I’ll embed the first video in the new series below (it’s about how PageRank flows from Twitter and Facebook in our web search rankings):

But usually I won’t blog about each new video. Instead make sure you follow @googlewmc . That way you’ll always find out first when new webmaster videos come out.

47 Responses to Follow @googlewmc on Twitter (Leave a comment)

  1. First one in….or atleast I hope I am 😛

    Even Facebook is almost completely NOFOLLOW. I am yet to find a link which isn’t NOFOLLOW.

    Thanks for the answer 🙂

  2. Firstly i love the hair 🙂 Secondly great information about links from Twitter and Facebook.

  3. Thanks for the video. It’s a great ressource for those not aware of Google not being able to index non-public content on Facebook as well as the ‘nofollow’ tag on Twitter. I’ve encountered way too many people that believes Twitter is good for link building 🙂

  4. What about the fact that Twitter links are usually shortened? Can Google even follow these and record where they go to? I realize they’re also nofollow, but as far as I can see, nofollow links aren’t totally ignored.

  5. Morris Rosenthal

    Matt,

    Re the video and links. I’ve noticed an upsurge in organic “links” from the big made-for-advertising how-to sites with content written by contract writers (as opposed to community sites) who include my site in references. However, they “NOFOLLOW” their reference links as well! At some point, might Google look at large sites that hoard page rank as a matter of design?

    Also, some months ago you asked about “question only” sites that come up for frequently long tail searches, like specific car parts, health complaints, etc, that don’t even have a bad answer featured, just the question and some computer generated links to similar questions on the site. I don’t keep a running diary because I’m not in the spam enforcement business, but as a constant Google user, it sure seems to me like these are becoming more frequent.

    Morris

  6. Matt and word on Caffeine’s release?

  7. How’s the Twitter diet coming? Looking fwd to tweets from the “official account for Google Webmaster Central”

  8. Related only in that it’s a video question, but could you post up your process for video encoding (What the raw file is saved as out of the camera, is it then just a direct upload to YouTube, or do you encode it first and then upload it, do you have access to higher bitrates than the general public, etc…?). Your videos have a unique sharpness and saturation to them I don’t often see in other uploads.

    Thanks,

    Chip-

  9. Thanks for the explanation. Nice hair style

  10. Your hair hasn’t grown back yet? Or are you continuing to shave?

  11. Oops – I posted that before I watched the video – you caught me!

  12. Matt you got rid of your hair.. Haven’t joined any skin head gangs have you?

    Google genius and representative by day, skin head gnagster by night YAY!

    😀 lol

  13. Hi Matt,

    This was the great question. I knew about the Twitter/Facebook, however I am so glad that someone finally said something .edu, .gov links. As you know there are many sites out there talking how valuable .edu, .gov links are and this will be my official confirmation to all of them, that links are links, regardless of the domain extension.

    I think that importance of being on Twitter/Facebook is much more valuable than having a backlink from them.

    Thanks,
    Emil

  14. Hey, I would like to be able to search google easier. And I like googles search engine a lot better than yahoo. After I get a search results page, either I am going to click on a link or go to the next page. It gets old having to navigate my mouse down to the tiny buttons at the bottom of the screen to go to the next page. I was wondering if it was possible to make the whole white part of the screen a button to go to the next page. A huge invisible button. Got a few other ideas…

  15. Great vid Matt. I actually did a top 10 post on my blog today just about you! No joke, it features your top 10 videos.. Thanks for all the help you do friend,

    Dwane

  16. Matt, not sure what it is, but when I watch your videos I never really seem to be able to walk away satisfied with an answer.

    When it comes to PageRank Google has always said it does not take into account links that have nofollow on them.

    The intro to the video says “how PageRank flows from Twitter and Facebook”, I can’t find any links on twitter that do not have a nofollow.

    The links on facebook are all HTTP/1.x 302 Moved Temporarily.

    You’re saying Google treats links the same, whether they are from facebook or twitter, but since there is a nofollow they don’t get taken into account right? It would have been much easier to say “we don’t take into account any links from twitter or facebook”, unless of course the nofollow rule has changed.

    You’re saying that “Links from relevant and important sites have always been a great way to get traffic & acceptance for a website” does not apply anymore and Google only looks at how reputable links are to determine your search rankings. It would have been good if you corrected the guy asking the question first.

    “if we can’t fetch then, then we probably cannot” what does this mean? If Google can’t fetch a page then it won’t be able to pass on any PageRank period..

    Or am I just completely missing the secret Google talk here?

  17. Hi Matt,

    Is there another way to get alerts about the videos other than Twitter? I, like many, hate Twitter.

  18. How about the links passing some degree of a trust metric?

  19. This Twitter diet fad is catching on…

  20. Hey Matt

    That green T-Shirt in the new SEO video brings memories of several conferences 🙂

  21. All links are equal? hmm all lnks pointing to one another are equal? I don’t think so.

    Mark, you can subscribe to G webmaster blog.

    Best,
    Jag

  22. do links from URL shorten sites count as link from the service site itself or the web page which they are shortening?

    BTW Matt is it that you won’t twitter until your hair grows fully ? 😛

  23. Last week we upgraded our website (http://www.locopoc.com) and as a solution to compensate the differences between old and new URLs we used a LINK tag with rel=”canonical” attribute at the header of our pages.
    Unfortunately, because of a programming mistake in the software cache, the value of this tag were not put correctly in some important pages such as the home page of the website. We’ve noticed the flaw and corrected it today. The problem is that our page rank in Google was decreased from 4 to 0, and we guessed that the cause was the wrong LINK tags.
    Now we are wondering whether the problem was only that, and whether Google would restore the old rank to our pages?

    Regards.
    mahmoudzadeh@gmail.com

  24. I’m curious about the lack of importance given to Twitter/FB/gov links too. Surely having your brand mentioned on a reputable/popular site counts for something?

  25. Is there another way to get alerts about the videos other than Twitter? I, like many, hate Twitter.

    This is “sort of” a non-Twitter way, but I just added their RSS feed to my feed reader and then get the updates as they come in. That way, I still get the benefit of the information without the annoyance of having to look at the little bird.

    You still have to visit their Twitter page to get the feed, but at least you only have to do it once.

  26. Thanks for the information about Twitter, Facebook & @googlewmc. It’ll be nice to have 1 resource that will always share info. about new videos.

  27. HI Matt,

    When will you be doing a video on SEO update, as many webmasters are getting worried about, that now SEO is not necessary as personalized results are shown because so many people does not know what is it and how to turn them off. And I don’t know there is some problem while watching the video from your blog although it is working fine on googlewebmastercentral (problem is so many jerks while running from the blog). Thanks

  28. Hi

    Thanks for the nice video. But could you explain how a facebook/twitter account is ranked. Ex: Web page is ranked based on incoming links(How reputable they are).

    Are accounts ranked in the same fashion. facebook account: How reputable my friends are…..

  29. Hi Matt,

    I don’t know any other way how to ask about this, so here it is. 10 days ago I’ve noticed some design changes on Google.com. It showed up for about 30 minutes, than out of the blue everything went back to being normal.

    Few moments ago, I posted this http://zp.rs/GJPCLf, because there was a second design update, however this time it lasted about 10 minutes.

    Am I going crazy, or you guys are really changing your design?

    Thanks,
    Emil

  30. RE: “How do you rate links from sites like Twitter and Facebook?”

    The lowest of the low because they are constantly used for SELF promotional “Link Building”. Traffic is also “junk traffic” for most part.

  31. Matt, not sure what it is, but when I watch your videos I never really seem to be able to walk away satisfied with an answer. Me neither, Politician give straighter answer to questions and they only spout self promoting rhetoric no matter what the question.

    Taco Fleur, you are not supposed to question Googlespeak, just accept that they talk in a way that only a FEW at Google can understand.

    IMO, it’s a insult to the intelligence of Webmasters every time we get a “Google answer”. Come on, Matt, you should respect Webmasters and just keep tight lipped and no more Googlespeak. Loose lip sink ships.

  32. Hi Matt,
    I am back after a long time, due to busy schedule. I am using twitter and when I found you there I started following you. Its great to hear from you about Google’s new stuff. Thanks

  33. Matt because I work on the move I use a dongle which means that videos are pretty difficult to watch as they stop/start every few seconds. Is there any way a transcript of the video can be provided otherwise I am missing out on important info from the horse’s mouth and have to rely on other blogger’s interpretation of what you have said and often they put their own bias on it.

    Please help!

  34. Just awesome. I was missing my daily dose of Matt’s insight, and I’m glad it shall now resume.

  35. Matt, you mentioned that things being equal a .com,.gov or .edu would carry the same weight when it comes to link juice.
    Does the same apply to international links giving our sites juice?

    thanks

  36. Love the hair cut Matt, you look so much younger! Thanks for the explanation about the links from Twitter, Facebook and the linking to .edu and .gov sites. Many bloggers believe that you can really get great link juice from linking to .edu and .gov websites. Thanks for uncovering that misnomer.

  37. so good !
    Love the hair cut Matt, you look so much younger!

  38. Thanks for the information bro.,

    these many days i thot that more links …. will get good rank

    but what I got now is …. more valuable links …. will bring good rank …

    Thx again

  39. Very useful information, thanks for the post!

    A couple of people above mentioned they don’t like using twitter – one solution could be to add the twitter feed to your google reader – no whales included

  40. This is very interesting – Twitter have a limit to the amount of Tweets in a day – do you have such a limit for tweets, is it lower – do you index ever tweet?

  41. I’m confused about edu links as well. I’ve always worked on the impression that those links count more as they are authority sites. Most confusing is that I had thought pagerank is not considered any more when determining SERPs. Am I mistaken here?

  42. I echo Stacey’s comment regarding PR not being used as a consideration going forward. Is this not the case? Please clarify.

  43. Great video. Good to know since I use twitter ALOT to promote my posts and links.

  44. I like to translate your videos to spanish an post it in my blog, Can I?

  45. Nooo, the best hair in Google’s team is gone! I have to follow your blog closer, or more imporatnt Google news like this will go past my sensors 🙂

  46. Matt,

    It would be great if there were transcripts of the great videos you release. That way it would be quicker to locate what a user is after let aside the fact that what has been said would be indexed and appear in the SERPs. Also, it would be useful for deaf people who would like to watch the videos too.

  47. @Modi Mann,

    All of the GoogleWebmasterHelp videos are captioned. If you click through to one of the videos, for example the video embedded above, you’ll see an icon below the video just to the left of the view count. If you click on that, it will expand a clickable transcript of the video. These captions are indexed for search purposes.

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